His
Holiness Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech September 12 at the
University of Regensburg in his German homeland. He discussed “the
question of God through the use of reason” and the matter of getting
“reason and faith [to] work together in the right way.” His basic
theme was that there has been a “synthesis with Hellenism achieved in
the early [Christian] church” and that this relationship between
Christianity and Greek philosophy and logic has been a very good
thing. He warned against those who believe this synthesis is “not
binding” upon new converts from non-western traditions; this view, he
declared, is “false.” The pontiff plainly intended to depict the Roman
Catholic Church as supportive of modernity and science in general, and
both western and tolerant.

The Pope opened his homily by referring
affectionately to his years teaching at the University of Bonn (from
1959) during which the university was a “universe of reason.” He then
segued into a description of some of his recent reading.

“I was reminded of all this recently
when I read … part of the dialogue carried on -- perhaps in 1391 in
the winter barracks near Ankara [in modern Turkey] -- by the erudite
Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the
subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.”

Thus he alluded to an encounter between
a Byzantine (Christian) emperor and a learned Persian (that is to say,
Iranian) Muslim a century after the last major Crusade. (I’m wondering
if there really was a Persian involved in a dialogue with Manuel, or
if the emperor simply composed a dialogue to express his views.) The
emperor, as cited by Benedict, tells the Persian,

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that
was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as
his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” BBC News reports
that the Pope said “I quote” twice, stressing that these weren’t his
own words.

The good Emperor Manuel regarded Islam
as irrational in its alleged effort to spread itself by force. Manuel
declared in response: “Not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s
nature.” “Acting reasonably,” the pope pointedly explained in his
talk, means to act “with logos” -- a term taken from Greek philosophy.
The Pope did not return to the issue of Islam, but rather devoted his
attention to the Church’s (reason-filled) Hellenistic heritage. He
declared, interestingly, that the Septuagint (translation of the Old
Testament into Greek from the third to first centuries BCE) is an
“independent textual witness and distinct and important step in the
history of revelation.” The broad point, again, is that the rational
Greek mind and the mind of the Church are one, the pillars of the
West.

Recall that the Greeks, aside from
shaping rational western thought, also shaped our ideas about
geography. The Greeks first divided “Europe” from “Asia,” and opined
that Greeks were unique and superior to the “Asiatics.” The Greeks,
declared the Father of History, Herodotus, knew that they were “free,”
whereas the Asiatics (particularly the Persians) were prone to
enslavement by nature. This ideological construction derives from a
century of conflicts -- the Greco-Persian Wars of the fifth century
-- but it has been echoed by Orientalists for centuries. Repeated by
the Pope, for example, who while still Cardinal Ratzinger told the
French newspaper Le Figaro that Turkey should not be admitted
into the European Union “on the grounds that it is a Muslim nation”
which has “always represented another continent during history, always
in contrast with Europe.”

In beginning his remarks citing that
exchange between a Byzantine Greek emperor and this “learned Persian,”
the pontiff was perhaps conveying a not-so-subtle political message.
It may have been a response to the learned letter from Iranian
President Ahmadinejad to President Bush. Ending his speech with two
references to the need for a (truly reasonable, nonviolent) “dialogue
of cultures” Benedict unmistakably alludes to former Iranian President
Khatami’s campaign for a “dialogue of civilizations.” This is the
Pope’s rejoinder to that plea, presented as the response of the
western world (growing out of that remarkable Judeo-Christian
Greco-Roman synthesis), to today’s Persia -- the Islamic Republic of
Iran.

Having read the speech, I just have a
few questions of my own for the Vicar of Christ.

Did the Byzantine emperors generally act
according to “reason” -- any more than their Persian, Turkish, or Arab
contemporaries?

Let’s look at this Manuel II character,
whom the Pope calls “erudite.” Crowned co-emperor by his father, in
1373, he lost his throne to his bother, who seized it in 1376. How’d
he get it back? By calling for help from the Muslim Turks! I suppose
that was reasonable.

Back on the throne in 1379, no doubt
acting in accordance with logos, he paid tribute to the Turkish Sultan
and actually had to live as a vassal at the Turkish court! But he
rebelled in 1391, the very year that while in the “barracks at Ankara”
mentioned by the Pope and preparing for war on the Turks, he wrote the
above-quoted remark about God’s nature.

Then what happened? According to the
Encyclopedia Britannica: “A treaty in 1403 kept peace with the Turks
until 1421, when Manuel’s son and co-emperor John VIII meddled in
Turkish affairs. After the Turks besieged Constantinople (1422) and
took southern Greece (1423), Manuel signed a humiliating treaty and
entered a monastery.” Maybe it hadn’t been so reasonable that time to
meddle with those Muslims. Maybe the Pope could have mentioned this in
his speech.

Here in 1391 we have an emperor in his
war camp, provoking what was to be a disastrous war with Muslims while
eruditely disparaging their religion. I’d like to ask the Pope:

Was there anything wrong with that?

And:

When did the Byzantine Empire ever
tolerate a “dialogue of cultures” or apply “reason” to religious
issues?

Seems to me that the Byzantine emperors,
including the Palaeologan line from the thirteenth century, persecuted
religious minorities, including Jews, Manichaeans and dissident
Christians, during centuries in which the Islamic world showed
relative tolerance. I’ve read the texts of anathemas that virtually
everyone in some parts of the Empire was obliged to pronounce publicly
in the sixth century: “I renounce Mani, Buddha his teacher,” etc. On
pain of death, basically. There was no division between church and
state. Many Byzantine Jews welcomed the initial Muslim Arab advances,
providing relief from Christian persecution.

One increasingly expects historical
distortion and hypocrisy in the speeches of Bush administration
officials. The effort to depict the Terror War as a war on
“Islamofascism” shows their desperation. They must be delighted to
hear the pope conflate Christianity, the west, and Reason explicitly
while implicitly linking Islam, violence, and irrational intolerance.
How sweet that His Holiness’s erudition should elliptically reference
Iran, while the Bush administration prepares to attack it!

* * * * *

Breaking new ground for a Roman pontiff,
Benedict forayed into the field of Qur’an exegesis in his talk, noting
that the Muslim holy book states: “There is no compulsion in
religion.” (Surah 2: 256) But he notes that the “experts” say that
this was composed early on, when “Mohammed was powerless and still
under threat.” He refers obliquely to “the instructions, composed
later … concerning holy war” implying that these more accurately
characterize Islamic teaching. Is he not stating that the real Muslim
teachings are those advocating intolerance and violence, and that
Christian teachings pose a rational nonviolent alternative? Such an
interpretation, aligning the Vatican with the neocon and other
Islamophobic camps, could have serious religious and political
implications.

The Regensburg talk has provoked an
outcry, in Pakistan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt. By all reports the
Bishop of Rome is a very careful and deliberate man, who has just
appointed a specialist in the Islamic world to serve as the Vatican’s
foreign minister. Much thought must have been put into the
carefully-worded talk. But what is Rome trying to accomplish?

Gary Leupp is a Professor of
History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts
University and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be
reached at:
gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.